Power Beyond His Own
by rebecca-in-blue
Summary: "He was the most powerful of all the Gracelings. How could Ashen or Bellamew make him doubt that?" My take on Leck's twisted thoughts on those around him.
1. Ashen

My dear readers, this story is **T-rated** for a reason. It's about Leck, and since Leck was obviously a very disturbed man, there is some disturbing, graphic, even triggering content in this story. It's probably the darkest thing that I've ever written. I don't want to drive any readers away, but if you're not comfortable reading graphic stuff, then this story might not be for you. Please proceed with caution. (It also contains spoilers for all three books.)

For my own reference: 87th fanfiction, 2nd story for Graceling Realm/Seven Kingdoms_._

* * *

_Of children's tales, of love and innocence, he knows and understands nothing. Nothing._  
_That they all have a power beyond his own, is a truth that he has never grasped._  
– Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

He wasn't always rough with Ashen. Sometimes, he was almost gentle with her. It depended on his mood, and on why he was treating her – whether it was to punish Ashen, or to punish to Thiel, or to satisfy Leck's own needs. Of course, he was always roughest with her when he was forcing Thiel to watch, but then, the next time he treated her, it was private and he was more tender. He wanted to be sure that Ashen never knew quite what to expect from him.

Sometimes he cut Thiel in front of Ashen, but he never cut Ashen in front of Thiel, or in front of anyone else. Nor did he ever cut her face, as he did with all his other patients. He didn't want his queen's beautiful face marred by scars from his knives. And no one else deserved the pleasure of watching Ashen bleed. She had such a pale complexion, especially for a woman from Lienid, where everyone was so golden-toned from the sun. That was one reason why Leck had chosen her for his bride years ago, when she was still practically a girl – her beautiful face and porcelain skin. He knew, even then, how much he would enjoy making her bleed.

And he did enjoy it, certainly, but it was difficult. Ashen had turned out to be far stronger and more willful than Leck had imagined when he first laid eyes on her. Her threshold for pain was quite high, and it seemed to grow higher every time Leck treated her. He had to cut her so deeply – across her belly, and her breasts, and other places that no one else would see – just to make her cry out. But when she_ did_ cry out, it was worth it, for there was no sound more soothing to Leck than her screams, and no sight more relaxing than the bright-red rivulets of blood running down her creamy-white skin.

She was willful, but after he found her weakness, controlling her became quite simple. He didn't even need to fog up her mind with his Grace. All that he had to do was threaten their daughter, telling Ashen that if she didn't obey him, he would harm little Bitterblue. Then she became so perfectly cooperative.

Leck often thought of what a shame it was that his daughter with Bellamew had died in infancy. If that girl had lived, then he could use her to manipulate Bellamew in the same way. But she had died, and Leck had to control Bellamew with his Grace alone, blinding her to the pain that he put her through – and it was never as comforting to him when they couldn't feel the pain.

What name had Bellamew given that child? Hava? Such a shame.

He couldn't say exactly why, but recently he'd begun to suspect that Bellamew was hiding something from him. It was almost as if she was in possession of some truth that his mind could never know. It was not unlike the mocking suspicion that he occasionally felt when he treated Ashen. Even when he forced her to strip naked and lie on his table so that he could cut her with his knives, even then, she seemed to possess some strange power that he couldn't identify or destroy.

Oh, it was maddening. When he was a boy in the Dells, he'd told the fire-haired Monster that he was the most powerful of all the Gracelings. And it was true, wasn't it? After all, his Grace had given him the throne of Monsea. How could these two women, without _any_ Grace, cause him to doubt it?

One night, to comfort himself after one of his Gracelings died in a failed experiment, he dragged Ashen out of her bed and down to his rooms. He cut her across her thighs, so deeply that she wept and screamed, so many times that her smooth, milky-white thighs were almost coated in warm, red blood. He slept soundly after he was done with her. There was such comfort in making her bleed. There was such purity in how completely she felt the pain, since he didn't need to use his Grace.

The Monster-woman in the Dells may have escaped from him, but Ashen never would, and there was comfort in that, too. A pale Lienid woman was a rare thing, and Leck prided himself on owning rare, beautiful things. Ashen was just one more thing that he owned. He would make sure that she never forgot that.

But the very next day, a strange thing happened. In the afternoon, he went to the library to ask Death about some manuscript, and Ashen happened to be there. She was sitting in an armchair in a corner of the library with Bitterblue, reading to the girl from a story-book. It pleased Leck to see that his queen looked paler than ever, from losing so much blood last night.

He was just close enough to overhear when Bitterblue interrupted the story to ask, "Mama, may I sit on your lap?" Leck waited, eager to hear how Ashen would decline, but instead she smiled and said, "All right, precious." He watched, with the worst feeling of failure, as Ashen drew the child into her lap, setting her down right on top of her lacerated thighs, as if it didn't hurt her at all.

Leck seethed, furious and confused. Holding the girl like that _had_ to hurt her. It _must_. He employed the finest Graced healers in all of Monsea in his castle, but even they weren't so skilled that Ashen could already feel no pain at all. And yet she stroked Bitterblue's hair as the girl snuggled against her, and went on reading her the story, and never even flinched. There was a peaceful smile on her face – no trace at all of the broken, bleeding woman that Leck had made cry last night.

Ashen hadn't even noticed him, and yet he felt _certain_ that she was mocking him. He felt certain, again, that she possessed some power that he could never know, some strength that he could never destroy, no matter how much he hurt her or clouded up her mind. The edges of his control were starting to fray...

Then his eye shifted to the child in her lap. _Bitterblue_. Ashen had given their daughter such an absurd name, and she doted on her at a level that Leck found almost nauseating. A thought ran through his mind – the strange strength that Ashen seemed to have, could it come from Bitterblue? Could the child be the source of it, somehow?

But he dismissed the idea almost immediately. It was impossible. Bitterblue was only... four or five, wasn't she? Yes, she was just a little girl with no Grace, incapable of empowering her mother in any way. She was young – still too young for the things that Leck had planned for her. He intended to train her, to mold her into the perfect queen – but not until she was older. Of course, when he wanted to, Leck could be a very patient man. He would wait, counting his knives, until Bitterblue had reached a useful age. But for now, she was still too small for his notice.

For now, he would go back down to his hospital, experiment on some Gracelings, and do treatments on a few little girls. He enjoyed treating little girls even more than Ashen and Bellamew. They would make him feel better again.


	2. Bellamew

I had intended this story to be a one-shot, but then this chapter happened. The same warnings apply.

* * *

_He didn't realize that love as powerful as your mother's love for you leaves its own mark._  
_To have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever._  
– Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone  


The night that he killed Bellamew was one of the worst nights, because his Grace failed him. His Grace had never failed him, not since he encountered that Monster-woman in the Dells. Of course, he'd been only a boy in the Dells, and a Monster was more powerful than a Graceling, so it made sense that she hadn't believed his words. But there was no reason – _none_ – why his Grace shouldn't work on Bellamew. He searched for some explanation but never found one, and it made him want to tear his hair out.

He wasn't even looking for Bellamew that night. He couldn't sleep, so he was walking the corridors of his castle, trying to calm his mind, and when he pushed open the door to the art gallery, Bellamew was there, holding a little girl in her arms. The girl had both arms wrapped around Bellamew's neck and was gazing up at her so adoringly that Leck would've been nauseated were he not so shocked. She was speaking to her, too; Leck caught the word _Mama,_ but that was all he heard, for as soon as he entered, they both whirled around and gasped. Bellamew didn't try to run, but she immediately set the child on the ground behind her, hiding her from Leck's view behind her skirts. She said nothing, and neither did the child, but no words were needed. Leck understood immediately who the girl was. She was his and Bellamew's daughter. _Hava_.

No, she was _his_ daughter – only his. Bellamew had told him that she'd died in infancy, when she was only two years old, and Leck had always suspected it to be a lie. But how had she kept the child hidden from him for all these years? He charged across the floor to Bellamew and shoved her aside, but the girl was gone.

He scanned the room with his eye, determined to remain calm. She couldn't have gone far. "Hava, come out," he called loudly. No doubt Bellamew had poisoned the child against him, but his Grace would fix that easily. "Hava, you don't want to hide from me. You aren't afraid of me. I'm your father, King Leck. Come out now. Stop hiding."

When there was no response, he began to search the gallery, looking in corners and behind statues and drapes. Bellamew watched him closely, but she still had said nothing and made no move to stop him. She seemed strangely calm – _triumphant,_ even – and it almost unnerved Leck. He repeated over and over while he looked for the girl, _You don't want to hide from me. You aren't afraid of me._ But still, she did not appear.

Leck seethed, furious and confused. The child couldn't possibly be resisting his words. No one in the kingdom could do that. So the only explanation was that she must've gotten out of range of his voice, and he didn't understand how that was possible. There was only one way out of the gallery, and the child wasn't so small that she could've slipped through it without him seeing. His castle was full of secret tunnels and hidden passages, but Leck knew them all... didn't he?

There was only explanation. Bellamew must've helped the girl to get away from him, somehow. He quickly, angrily crossed the gallery to her, but she didn't cower or shrink back from him. She held her head high and looked straight at him, unafraid. Leck was unused to anyone looking directly at him, and he grabbed her arm, so hard that she gasped but did not cry out. He would kill her, he decided – slowly and painfully, and he would find such peace in her pain. He would kill her for keeping their daughter from him for all these years – but first, he would make her give the girl to him. He would make sure Bellamew understood, before he killed her, that Hava was_ his_ daughter now, not hers. He felt certain that knowing this would hurt her more than anything else.

"You don't want to hide her from me anymore," he said to her, and immediately, Bellamew's gaze lost its sharp edge. Her face turned vacant and her eyes turned empty, and for a wonderful moment, Leck felt that old, familiar thrill of victory. He could see his Grace casting its spell over Bellamew, and very soon now, she would hand the girl – _his daughter_ – over to him, and he would have the child all to himself. Ashen was still keeping Bitterblue from him for now, but she wouldn't be able to do that for much longer, and in the meantime, he could do whatever he liked with this girl. And Hava was a bit older than Bitterblue, wasn't she? Yes, perhaps she would be more useful to him.

_I'll have two of them_, he realized. _Two little girls all to myself,_ and the thought was so sweetly delicious. He pictured Hava and Bitterblue holding hands in little matching dresses, and the image almost made his mouth water. Yes, the two of them would be his perfect little princesses, and he would train them up together to be perfect queens – just as soon as he got their meddlesome mothers out of the way. Ashen and Bellamew had always been more trouble to him than they were worth, really.

"You want to give her to me," he prompted Bellamew, now more eager than ever to get his hands on Hava. "You want to give me Hava."

"Hava..." Bellamew repeated blankly, and then – Leck was so shocked by what happened that he actually gasped aloud. It was as if the girl's name was a light. As soon as Bellamew spoke it, the fog of his Grace lifted from her, and her eyes lost their clouded dullness. She glared at him fiercely and shook her head. Leck suddenly remembered what had happened when he told Bitterblue that he would make her cut off one of Ashen's fingers if she ever disobeyed him. His Grace had failed him then, too – and on a _child_, no less. A Graceless little girl! "You can't make me hurt Mama," the girl had told him, her voice strong and certain.

Bellamew's voice was just as strong now. "_No_," she said loudly, her two wild eyes staring straight to Leck's cold one. "_Never_. I'll never give her to you, and you'll never find her. You'll never even look at her with your filthy eye. You'll never – "

"Where have you been keeping her? Tell me," Leck interrupted, his voice rising. He tightened his grip on Bellamew's arm and shook her hard, but she was so used to him manhandling her – she and Ashen both were – that she hardly even noticed it anymore. "Tell me where she's hiding!" It unnerved Leck that she'd managed to keep the child a secret from him for so many years. How had she possibly done it? He knew his castle by heart.

But his words had no effect on Bellamew. She was screaming now, raving like the madwoman that Leck had always suspected her to be. "You've always been in the darkness! You've seen nothing – _nothing_! Ashen has a light that you can't see by. Bitterblue has the strength of this castle. Someday you'll see, finally – you'll see, but then it will be too late for you!"

Leck gritted his teeth and put his face close to hers. "By dawn tomorrow," he promised, "you'll be dead, and I'll have every guard in this castle searching for that girl. I'll find her sooner or later. You won't be able to protect her anymore."

But Bellamew just laughed at that, as if Leck had just said something hilarious. She truly had lost her mind, he decided. "I'll always be able to protect her," she answered, boldly throwing her head back. "_Always_. I know you don't believe me, but it's true." The strength in her voice – the _certainty_ of it – was maddening to him.

He roughly dragged her away, out of the gallery and down the stairs to his rooms, and the whole time, she kept screaming about power and strength, light and darkness, and things that Leck couldn't see. He paid no mind to her words. They were lunacy, they made no sense at all, but she went on raving. She didn't stop, in fact, until Leck pulled out one of the knives that he kept hidden in his rooms, and stabbed her through her heart.

Standing over her body, his fists clenched, panting a bit from anger – Leck didn't feel any of the comfort that he usually got from a killing. Her death had been much too fast. Likely she'd felt almost no pain at all, and that gave him the worst feeling of failure. But he couldn't stand listening to her rant on for another second. No, he'd had to silence Bellamew, once and for all. And yet... yet there was no peace in the silence, either. His rooms now felt _too_ silent, too empty, without her voice, and when Leck raised his eyes from her body, he saw Bellamew's sculptures standing all around him, staring at him with that same mockery in their stony eyes. Like all of her sculptures, they had too much feeling, too much strength.

His control was fraying again, and he wondered, with a rare stab of fear, if perhaps there had been some truth in Bellamew's mad words all along.

**FIN**


End file.
